


I Stand Amid the Roar

by abbysojee



Series: Golden Sand [2]
Category: Spies Are Forever - Talkfine/Tin Can Brothers, The Spies are Foreverse
Genre: Edgar Allan Poe References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 08:39:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19195450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbysojee/pseuds/abbysojee
Summary: Owen isn’t a happy kid, but he can pretend.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I obviously don't own the fabulous musical "Spies are Forever," or the excellent works of Edgar Allan Poe.

_Brighton, England, 1946_

The onset of June is not a particularly life-changing event for Owen Carvour, whose life isn’t really changing at all these days. Mrs. Mary Anderson’s Orphanage is full of young kids eagerly awaiting their turn to face the big bad world, and Owen, at fifteen, has lost hold of that illusion (and yet...). It slipped through his fingers like sand on the Brighton beach, the only place Owen loves more than the local library. He occasionally leads groups there now, waddling like a proud mother duckling keeping all her chicks from running into the street. Mrs. Anderson had not appreciated that comparison, but, Owen thinks, there is a certain poeticism to the thought.

He’s all about poetry these days. Tess, bunking in the room next door (though not for long) likes _good_ poetry: Whitman, Yeats, Tennyson. Sadly, no matter how many quatrains or sonnets Owen drafts, he’s starting to believe that his destiny does not lie in that realm. Or in the realm of channel-swimming, which he had tried once (and failed at miserably). Or, come to think of it, tennis, which he had picked up for a few days and dropped once his opponent had been adopted.

_No_ , Owen decides, _Tess likes cheerful, happy poetry; I’m not a happy type._ He much prefers the Edgar Allan Poe he has sampled, has even gone so far as to read the short stories and memorize passages to whip out at opportune moments. Yet Tessa would hardly appreciate passages from _Annabel Lee_ or _Lenore_ , not when there is Wordsworth to read.

When the car horn honks, Owen looks up from his perch in the yard. A couple of kids are playing near him, strictly instructed not to interrupt Owen’s artistic retreat. A couple gets out of the car, posh-looking, middle-class. They walk up the steps. Owen’s concentration becomes hard to maintain (he can’t help - no, don’t think - ). It feels like they’re in the orphanage forever, but, in the blink of an eye, they’re descending. With them is Tess, golden hair glinting in the light. She looks awfully short next to the man holding her hand, though that doesn’t mean much. She only comes up to Owen’s shoulder blade, and he hasn’t even finished his growth spurt. He’s shooting up so quickly that his trousers and sleeves hit him at all the wrong places, at knobby ankles and wrists. Tess glances around the yard and spots Owen. She says something to the man, approaches Owen like she would a scared rabbit.

“I’m leaving,” she tells him, as if he didn’t know.

“I can see that.” Suddenly his journal is the most interesting thing in the world, with its lackluster poetry and monster doodles. (It will never be as interesting as her).

She sits next to him and takes his hand. Owen looks into her earnest face, her pretty brown eyes, and thinks about how Edgar Allan Poe would have obsessed over her. She says, “You’re angry. I don’t want to leave without a proper goodbye.”

“Sometimes,” Owen grits out, “there is no goodbye.” He didn’t get to say goodbye to his parents when they were taken out by the Blitz. It was, according to Mrs. Anderson, only Providence that left half of their apartment complex in pieces. Nine year-old Owen had been playing on one side while Margaret and Joseph Carvour had been cooking on the other. It was a cosmic coin flip, a 50/50 chance.

In Owen’s opinion, they had all lost.

Tess doesn’t soften. It’s what Owen likes about her, her unwillingness to yield. “Stop making everything so dark,” she orders, “And at least pretend you’re happy for me.”

Owen isn’t a happy kid, but he can pretend to be happy. For her. So he fixes a smile on his face and pulls her into a one-armed hug that makes her laugh. She buries her head in his neck, hair tickling his face. Owen shuts his eyes. The sun warms his face, making the inside of his eyelids glow red. The ground beneath them is soft from last night’s storm, probably wetting the seat of his pants and the sides of Tessa’s stockings. She smells like laundry detergent. The world smells like rain.

Owen wants to give her something, a parting gift, but has nothing. Tess, until this moment, has also had nothing. But she always loved poetry. He doesn’t want to embarrass himself with his own, so he casts around in his head, trying to find some snippet that fits the mood. All he knows is Poe, so: “‘You are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream,’” he begins. “‘Yet if hope has flown away in a night, or in a day, in a vision, or in none, is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.’”

Tess lifts her head from his shoulder. “That’s beautiful,” she says quietly.

“It’s Poe,” Owen teases. “From ‘A Dream Within a Dream.’ It really struck me, when I read it.” The man checks his watch; Owen swallows. The goodbye is coming. He’s never been good at those. “Goodbye, Tessa Green,” he settles on. “I hope that you are happy.”

Tess doesn’t comment, just pulls away. She gives him one last smile. “Goodbye, Owen Carvour. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

It is an odd goodbye, but strangely poetic. Owen is all about poetry these days. And even though he loses her, he never loses the words.


	2. Two

_London, England, 1953_

They meet on the streets of London (perhaps “meet” isn’t exactly the right word). It isn’t June, but it _is_ raining, cats and fucking dogs. Owen is hunkered in a telephone booth, MI6 on the line. He sees her through the panes. She is hunched walking past, blond curls escaping the hood of her coat, and Owen _knows_ it is her.

He sees her, but she doesn’t see him. No one ever does, these days.

Owen’s eyes follow her trail as she walks away (she always walks away). He whispers absently into the receiver, “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” A humorless smile catches on his face; fitting, that he would remember the verse.

“What was that, Carvour?” His superior snaps.

“Nothing,” Owen says. The smile leaks off his face. “You were saying?”

**Author's Note:**

> The poem quoted in this work is Poe's "A Dream Within a Dream." Thanks for reading!


End file.
